With a thirty-nine year career span in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdul Sattar was twice Pakistan's Foreign Minister, from July to October 1993, and from 1999 to 2002. He was Foreign Secretary from 1986 to 1988 and twice Pakistan's Ambassador to India. He also served as Ambassador to the USSR and Permanent Representative to the IAEA in Vienna. As a Distinguished Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, he wrote a research paper 'Reducing Nuclear Dangers in South Asia' which was published in the Nonproliferation Review in 1994, and later in Dawn. His other research paper, 'Shimla Pact: Negotiating Under Duress', was published in journals in Islamabad and New Delhi in 1995. He also contributed the section on foreign policy in the book Pakistan in Perspective, 1947-1997, published by Oxford University Press on the fiftieth anniversary of Pakistan. A veteran of the diplomatic service, Abdul Sattar has written analytical articles on topical national and international issues in Pakistani as well as foreign journals in the 1990s, and a weekly column in the Pakistan Observer from 2006 to 2009.
